The Electrical College and More

It seems like every day there is some new screed about abolishing the Electrical College, how it "cheated" the American people out of the President most of them wanted.  If the US were a direct democracy, in the sense of electing Presidents, I would certainly agree.  But the US is not a direct democracy and there are reasons for it, good reasons.

We have an indirect democracy, also known as a representative democracy or republican democracy.  That has always been the case and the Founding Fathers established one under the Constitution for practical as well as theoretical reasons.

That seems to be eluding many of these calls for eliminating the EC.  I believe it was the New York Times that ran a piece calling the EC a product of slave-owning patricians in the South.  Well, many Southerners might well have favored the EC in 1787, as did many in the North.  I wonder if this author even knows there were slaves in many Northern states at that time.  (One of my Amherst professors, physics, wrote a little book a few years ago documenting 18th Century slavery in the Connecticut River Valley, that is, Massachusetts.  The last I looked, Mass was north of the Mason-Dixon Line.)  And the Times wonders why its readership is down??????

Among the reasons for the EC back then was that, in effect, in a popular vote, four states could choose the President (among other things).  Nine states, then, would be left in the lurch even if vehemently opposing the winning candidate.  Today, just using states' current populations, seven or eight states might be able to choose the President.  (And that doesn't count the cemetery votes, illegal voters, and voting machines that recorded more votes than the number of voters who showed up.)  So even today, voters in 42 or 43 states might not have their votes counted, if the top seven or eight states wanted/were unified.  The EC was established for unity and to eliminate it is a recipe for disunity, not exactly something we need right now.  I believe a small minority of states can still dictate the Presidential election outcome, but I think it takes 13 or 14 states to do so.  At least that's some measure of restraint.

The Founders also were aware of tyranny, even tyranny of the majority.  Well, if we have majority rule......  Of course we don't; we have many checks and balances to prevent, as in the past, one group from discriminating against another group.  Granted, in many instances it took a long time, far too long, to see this work, but we are still getting there.  Who would argue that, say, white males should be able to discriminate against, say, black females?  After all, if whites are a majority (and I'm not sure they still are) and we believe in majority rule......

We have a federal system, one that allows states to control matters that affect them.  Most obviously and of little debate, why should Florida be forced by a central gov't to purchase snow removal equipment the way Michigan or Minnesota or Alaska does?   Taking that a step farther, why, through its larger population, should NY be able to determine immigration policy for Arizona?  How many illegal immigrants are flooding over the NY state borders?  How do New Yorkers have to deal with the problems and difficulties of illegal immigrants?  Comparatively, they don't.  And taking it a step farther, because California voters think that grown men, by stating their rest room preferences, should be allowed in the same rest rooms as little girls, why should Wyoming voters be forced to accept that same policy?  (If you haven't noticed, California is a little different.)

In that same vein, Clinton rec'd about 2 1/2 million more votes than Trump; it might have been a few more or a few less, but I think that's about right.  Regardless, California gave Clinton well over 4 million more votes to Clinton  I'm not arguing Calif shouldn't count.  Of course it should.  And I could play this game with several states, but California is the one that makes the biggest difference.  The Electrical College was created to prevent, in this instance, Calif from dictating a President to the rest of the states, esp the smaller ones.

If some don't buy that argument, I assume they also believe we should eliminate the US Senate.  After all, why should a state with fewer than one million people, such as Wyoming or one of six other states, have the same representation as one, California again, with nearly 40 million people?  Perhaps people think that is so; I don't know, but I'd guess not many do.

But mostly I think it odd that the EC wasn't in anyone's radar until after the election.  When Clinton was the sure winner, even talk of an Electrical College landslide, it wasn't an issue.  I still like my analogy of a month or so ago.  Who wins the football game?  It's the team with the most points, even if the other team has two or three or four times more yardage.  If you don't like the way winners are determined, change the rules.  But be careful.  Look how the Democrats are now cringing at the "nuclear option" in the US Senate.  (I hope that they are thanking Harry Reid.)

All this makes me wonder where some people get their education.  OK, I'm not talking about the high schools.  Kids there don't pay attention.  But in the colleges, who can graduate with a degree without knowing the rationale for the EC?  Who can spew forth the tripe that has been in some of the "We need to eliminate the EC now" op-eds?  And do they think, think at all?  In eliminating the EC, will these folks later come to regret their actions the way Senate Dems do the "nuclear option?"